


Quite So Impossible

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [268]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Condoms, Epic Magnificent Disaster of Their Own Making, Exhibitionism, First Time, Lack of Communication, Lack of condoms, M/M, Men Who Won't Talk To Each Other, Mildly Dubious Consent, Misunderstandings, Multi, Not-So-Great Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Schmoop, Silver Fox Tony, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-04-07 18:12:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19090411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It doesn’t go so well the first time.All right, it doesn’t go wellat all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Alpha/beta/omega dynamics. Prompt from this [generator](https://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/promptsnsfw).
> 
> Haven't given up on the previous MM, friends, but I needed a break. Any excuse, too, to explore another way of playing with a different version of Silver Fox Tony, whom I (apparently) adore.

It doesn’t go so well the first time.

All right, it doesn’t go well _at all_.

It’s not as if it was the first time for either of them, by any means; over the years, Bucky’s had enough to fill a stadium--sometimes by duty, not choice--and Tony, well… He worked hard for his reputation, back in the day, and even though it’s been a while since his bed saw anything headline-worthy, the metaphorical notches on his bedpost don’t lie. Alphas are usually the ones who preen over their scoreboards, as it were, but then Tony’s always made a point of thumbing his nose at convention, especially other people’s morays, so why not have a go at biology and the social construction of sex, eh? Besides, back in the day, it really pissed people off to see an omega act like a slut (their word, not Tony’s)--which has always been Tony’s favorite incentive; he’s spent his life making outrage an art.

So they’d both danced the mambo before, is the point, many, many damn times, and it’s understandable, then, why they thought having a go at each other in bed would be a simple if mutually delightful exercise.

Imagine their surprise when it wasn't.

Oh, everybody comes. That's not the problem. Balls are wrung dry, a knot tied; thanks to Bucky’s warm, metal fingers, his semi-felonious tongue, Tony's never been so wet in his life. But in the matter of the deed itself, the actual act of penetration, something doesn’t feel right.

“What?” Tony says through slim teeth, pushing back the scrum of Bucky’s hair. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky’s perched above him, arms trembling. His body is covered in sweat and the low smell of Tony’s come and he’s the same divine leonine who’s haunted Tony’s dreams for months, ever since he walked into the offices of Carbonell and Co. trailing a scent that send every omega on the floor scrambling to their respective doors to gape at him ambling by. But it was Tony’s door he was heading for; Tony with whom he sat for an interview for the new Head of Security post; Tony who had to battle back every hard-wired desire to actually listen to what James Buchanan Barnes was saying instead of a) hiring or b) climbing the man on the spot.

In the end, he’d behaved himself and hired Bucky because he was the best fit, not the hottest, but that gorgeous tension he’d felt the first time they shook hands--without gloves, because Tony was old enough to make his own dumb decisions, thanks, and that’s just how he rolls--the thing that had made Bucky’s nose flare and those ridiculously blue eyes sweep up to his slow (cue the music), it continued to linger, to keep Tony up at night in the nicest possible way. And sometimes, when he managed to sneak a peek at Bucky in a meeting or on the plane or in the back of the car at night when Jarvis was taking the long way home, he imagined that he’d catch that look again, Bucky’s, like he had that first day: a look that said _I see you, omega_ ; a look that said _I want you_ ; a look that said _And I mean to have you, someday_.

Never mind that Bucky was 30some and stunning, a magazine model of an alpha walking through the world in real life, while Tony was inching past 50, a little longer in the tooth, gray hair fighting black and skinnier than he’d been back in the day. Bucky was muscle, Bucky was _fine_ , and Tony had always been handsome, that he could still hang his hat on, but he wasn’t the picture of omega twink all the kids seemed to go for these days, that’s for sure. When he was young and dumb, that had worked for him, being different; he loved being everybody’s flavor of the month. But now that he was older and slightly more wise, the pictures on the newstand, on the TV, of good-looking and scantily-dressed omegas stuck with him more than they should have; anyway, now that he was of a distinctly different demographic, they were a lot harder to ignore.

Loneliness, though, had its privileges, and one of those were the hours between lights out and dawn when he could imagine Bucky beside him, those strong, scarred hands stroking his chest; that soft, pursed mouth on his neck, on his nipples, turning up in a chuckle as Tony shivered and rocked.

That Bucky might really want him didn’t seem quite so impossible, in the dark.

Fast forward then to that night, this one, when Bucky had come up to the penthouse late bearing plans for the trip to Rio that couldn’t wait and they’d ended up like this, naked and greedy in Tony’s bed, Tony wrung dry twice already (fuck that, over 50) and Bucky growling (or he had been), biting at Tony’s neck and promising more.

Except something had changed once he’d given Tony his cock, once he’d spread apart Tony’s knees and damn well mounted him and shoved that big, beautiful dick up inside.

Now, his face is shuttered, his eyes dim. It’s as if a curtain’s been drawn. Oh, he’s still hard, still poised to give Tony the fuck of his life. But something’s wrong; Tony can feel it, smell it, see it when Bucky looks down at him at last.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he croaks. God, he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Not for me, Tone. Want me to stop?”

Tony’s whole body curls at the words, almost like a command:  _hold him in don't let him go_. Stop? Now? Oh, hell no.

He tries to say that but at that comes out is a groan, like something supernatural, a ghost welling up and out of his throat, and with that, Bucky’s hips shove and he cries out and then the bed is shaking, quaking, as Tony throws his head back and holds on for dear fucking life.

And it's good. Oh, fuck is it ever. Coming with Bucky groaning in his ear is Tony's new favorite kink.

But after, when Bucky’s tied in and pulsing steadily into the condom, the smell’s wrong, something in the air is; as good as Tony’s idiot body feels, something, his gut tells him, is seriously wrong.

“Bucky,” he murmurs. They’re on their sides now, face to face, Bucky’s hands folded around Tony’s ass, keeping himself mounted firmly inside. “What’s the matter?”

“Shhhh,” Bucky says. He kisses the sound in Tony’s mouth once, and then twice. “Everything’s fine.”

 _Yeah, but it’s not, though_ , Tony wants to say, means to, but the hormones flooding his system are a lot and it’s been a decade since he’s come three times in one night and he’s tired, exquisitely so, the sort of tired that only comes when he’s been fucked like this, used and bred and filled and never mind the condom, the small but pertinent fact that Bucky isn’t his mate; in the moment, as Bucky keeps coming, keeps whimpering, a small, desperate noise at the back of his throat, Tony’s idiot body doesn’t know any better. All it knows is that he’s full and he’s made an alpha happy and it’s not so far a leap, is it, to believe that all that warmth, all those sweet, sticky feelings his pheromones are feeling mean that he’s safe and he’s loved and that Bucky--beautiful, wounded Bucky who’s seen shit that Tony can’t bring himself to imagine--will stay there with him, in him, always.

In the stale light of morning, though, Bucky’s gone, and that odd smell of something unsettled lingers, deepens. It’s louder than the smell of Bucky’s come. He’d spilled some on the bed, Tony remembers vaguely, when he’d finally drawn himself out and peeled back the condom and--

“Holy shit,” Tony had said, sleepy, tottering on the edge of good sense. “You always give it up like that? Fuck. I’m surprised the damn thing didn’t break.”

Bucky hadn’t looked at him. Had kept his eyes on the weight of the condom, the bulging, wet stretch. Said: “Been awhile for me, that’s all.”

“Mmmm, hurry up and get rid of it.” Tony had stretched out his leg, nudged Bucky’s back with his calf. “Need you back.”

“Can’t. I have Ops in two hours.”

“You can sleep here, alpha.”

Bucky had turned back to face Tony, the condom shaking in his hand, and they’d both heard the seed spill on the sheets, smelled it. Which had only, apparently, made matters worse.

“I have to go.” The words gruff, abrupt. The bed shaking as Bucky shot up. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Tony had said, remembers saying. “You know what, Buck? I don’t think you are. Not one damn little bit.”

Bucky stood up, a long line in the shadows. “Think what you want.”

And that was it, poof; condom in the trash and clothes gathered and not so much as a kiss goodbye.

“Your briefing’s at two today,” Bucky had said at the door. “I’ll have the Rio options we talked about drawn up for you to review.”

“Fine.” He’d sounded hurt because he was, damn it; saw no reason to hide it. He deserved better than a fuck-and-run. Didn't he?

Bucky had lingered for a moment. “Tony," he said finally. It sounded like a question.

“What?”

He heard Bucky take a deep breath. “Forget it. It's nothing. I'll see you this afternoon. Goodbye."

Now, sitting up alone in the light a few hours later, the sheets stink of Bucky, the whole room does: the pillows, the covers, Tony’s skin--they all reek of alpha, and if he weren’t so fucking old, if Bucky hadn’t drained him dry, he’d be hard again, Tony thinks; he’d be rutting into the sheets, acting like a teenager the morning after they took their first knot.

But he has years on him now, miles, experience, and his dick isn’t ready for that trick. Plus, it just makes him sad, because what lingers too is the sense that something he didn’t understand had gone sideways, very very wrong, and what it was and why it shut Bucky down, he has no goddamn clue. Not at all.

So it’s good that he’d old, he tells himself as he pads towards the shower. Never mind that his ass aches and his back’s strained and that there are bruises on his hips, big ones, from the power of Bucky’s flesh and metal hands. It’s a blessing this morning that his cock’s too tired to stand up, even to the scent of an alpha. It’s a good thing, it is, because if he was hard and alone instead of just being alone, floating on the feeling of the night before instead of standing under the spray to wash it off, then his eyes might not be dry, then he might be hurting. Then he might even let himself be fucking sad.

He’s not, though. This is what Tony tells himself. He’s fine. Bucky fucked him nine ways to Sunday. That’s all that he’s wanted from the man, right?

It isn’t, of course. And Tony knows that.

But Bucky, twisting in an office chair across town as his Ops Team files in clutching coffee and shooting the shit? Does not.

Yeah, Bucky, master tactician, former (unofficial) assassin, has no grip on his situation with Tony. But then, to be fair, how would you tell a guy that you slept with but also signs your paychecks that, oops, sorry, turns out that you think he’s ideal mate, that you came two shakes from claiming him without his consent, that it took everything you had in the tank not to hold him down on your dick and bite your desire into his the soft skin of his neck until he was yours, period full stop, whether he liked it or not?

He should have pulled out, Bucky thinks miserably, gnawing on the end of his pen. He shouldn’t have kissed the man in the first place. But he’d looked so unspun, Tony had; tie off and shirt open, the gray and black hair underneath. And his smell--god, Tony always smelled good, but ensconced at home, in his own sacred space, his ease and contentment had made the air ache from the smell of spring, of blooming flowers and green cut grass and when he’d smiled at Bucky, smiled and patted his knee and tried to hand him a drink, Bucky had taken the glass and shoved it at the table and reached for Tony, at last, instead.

Since the first day they'd met, he'd wanted to do that: to stretch his arms across the table or the aisle or the seat and tug Tony against him, nuzzle the sharp gray turn of Tony's beard, lick the pale stretch of his neck. Even during his interview, all he could think about was what Tony would look with his back on the desk and his pants down, his face writhing as Bucky stroked his fingers inside. And then Tony had shaken his hand at the end, palm to palm, and he'd gotten so hard in the elevator he'd had to find a bathroom before he made it to the car and worked one out into his palm. And then last night, fuck, it was Tony's come that he'd cupped there, wasn't it, that sweet omega heat spilling over his knuckles before it had gone sideways, before he'd--

“Sir?” one of the guys says, Rogers, he of the big, earnest eyes that lead the troops to look in Bucky’s direction. “I think we’re all here.”

“Are we? Good. Fine.” Bucky rubs the bridge of his nose and picks up his notes. “Hill, is that you over there by the panel? Hit the lights.”


	2. Chapter 2

Frosty, that’s what the next week looks like.

They can’t avoid being in the same room, of course; they both have jobs and said jobs require them to be in meeting together, to listen to each other, sometimes (horrors) even to speak. But that doesn’t mean they have to like it.

Tony gets prickly easily that week; he’s quick to come up defensive, no matter who’s talking to him, and he’s painfully aware of it. He feels like a sulking teenager stomping around. He even yells at Pepper, his living right hand, in the middle of a conference call and she has zero qualms about giving it right back, presence of the company’s whole fucking board on the line be damned. She dresses him down again after, in the privacy of his office this time, and when she blows out, his face is the one that’s a candle, burning with embarrassment that he’s damn well earned. It’s all over the building by lunch.

Bucky, he does what he can to avoid facetime, but with Rio coming up--the meetings, the government schmoozing, the keynote--he can’t duck out of it all. He starts treating Rogers as a ferry, sending him up to Tony’s office when privacy is required to talk the boss through the logistics of _here’s how we’ll be moving you when_. That gets him an eyebrow from Rogers and confused looks from his team but he doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t have to. He’s not sure if he can.

He would pay money, actual cash dollars, gold bars, to be able to get out of this trip. But he also can’t imagine letting Tony go overseas without him; that’d be an abdication of duty at best. Never mind the fact that he dreams that whole week. Dreams about Tony’s body, its sharp angles, its curves; about the softness at his center, the smell of his arousal, what it had felt like to have Tony’s slick sliding over his balls. And it’s not as if he’s never dreamed of Tony before, but these bastards make him wake up wanting not just to fuck but to have his mouth again over Tony’s neck, nuzzling, feeling the pressure of Tony’s pulse rise and fall as he lapped at the place where Tony’s blood boiled, where the inescapable pleasures of biology called to him, screamed at him, sang.

He wakes up that week with his dick hard and his mouth watering, a queasiness that won’t go away.

There can’t be a next time, he tells himself in the hallway, in his office, in the car out to the airfield, Hill and Romanov on either side of him, their eyes on the traffic, their attention unlike his actually on the matter at hand. He can’t kiss Tony again, can’t feel those long, clever hands in his hair or have them clutching his ass. Because if there is, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to stop.

Strike that. He is sure. He won’t.

 

****

 

Rio is a flashbang, one of those places that Tony’s always loved. Hot sand and gorgeous people and a air of devil-may-care. They’re not as puritan in their mores, the citizenry of Brazil; their president is an omega, for example, loud and proud, with a brood: a dark-haired alpha with amazing tits and a ginger beta with a killer smile. He’s the one raising their kids. In the streets, there’s the same kind of diversity; the sidewalks aren’t all alpha/omega. There are omegas with betas and betas with alphas, no omega in sight, and even a few alphas with alphas, their fingers intertwined and their combined smell even in passing enough to make Tony feel deliciously weak.

“Sir,” Rogers says. Tony can hear him frowning. “I’d prefer it if you rolled up the window.”

“Yeah,” Tony says without turning around, without taking his eyes away from all that color and beauty. “I’m sure you would.”

It’s so many leaps and bound beyond the US that it feels like another planet and god, Tony thinks dreamily, a little buzzed on the scents and the sounds, he fucking love Brazil. How had he let so many years fly past since he’d last came down? Shit, he needs a night on the town.

“No,” Rogers says at the hotel when Tony makes the mistake of asking. “No, sir. I’m sorry. We haven’t made any plans for that. You’re having dinner in your suite tonight; we’ve blocked this off as jet lag recovery time. You’re meeting with the chief exec of Davent Corp tomorrow morning at nine.”

Tony laughs in his face. Rogers may have youth on his side and many pounds of highly-trained muscle, but Tony’s the boss, goddamn it. It’s his fucking prerogative. “I’m well aware of my schedule, Mr. Rogers, but that doesn’t change _my_ plans for the evening. Adjust yours.”

Rogers turns the color of cranberries but his voice stays even and calm. “Mr. Stark, we can’t just turn on a dime.”

“Well, I can.”

The man doesn’t flinch. “I’ll have to contact Chief Barnes. It’s his call.”

“It is not his fucking call, Rogers, you got that? It’s mine.”

“Then I’ll have to inform him of the change in plans.”

“Fine. You do that.” He heads for the bedroom, the shower. His clothes in the closet, already unpacked. “But I’m not discussing this with him, either. Let him know that, won’t you, Rogers? This is happening. And if you people can’t keep up, I have no qualms about going out by myself. Been here many times over the years and I don’t need a goddamn babysitter."

“Sir,” Rogers says stiffly. “Yes, I’ll tell him, sir.”

He feels buoyant in the shower, more like his old self; his blood’s pumping from raising his voice. It only makes sense, then, to reach down and clear the pipes. Between that and the rosewater soap and the the sweetly scalding hot water, it’s the best he’s felt in days.

When he steps out of the bedroom, though, in in close-cut cotton trousers and white linen shirt, Rogers is gone and the first thing that he sees is Bucky’s stormcloud of a face.

“You’re not going out tonight, Mr. Stark.”

Tony rolls his eyes and turns up his sleeves. “Not up for discussion, Barnes. Get your team on board or get out of the way.”

“My team has work to do for tomorrow,” Bucky says. “As you are very much aware.”

“Great. So I’ll go alone.”

He’s two steps from the door when Bucky’s voice stops him. “The hell you are. I’m coming with you.”

That should not make Tony happy; he’s aware. It should definitely piss him off. It shouldn’t make something in him, the omega, preen a little and arch its back into a curl. It does.

He’s not sure what to make of it.

He aims for bored when he speaks, almost gets there. “Well,” he says, “if that’s how you want to spend your evening, Barnes.” _Watching me flirt, watching people flirt back. Watching me maybe get laid_.

Barnes’s face is unreadable, a saltwater mask, but Tony can hear his metal fist flexing, the gears gritting their teeth. “It’s my job, sir.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Tony grins, one that only deepens when Barnes hands him a scowl back. “So let’s go. The night’s not getting any younger, eh?”


	3. Chapter 3

The club Tony drags him to--strike that: marches towards--requires one cab ride and two blocks of walking and by the time that Tony bangs through the doors and throws himself into the writhing, lit-up mass, Bucky is ready to kill him. And that’s before Tony tries to give him the slip.

Because, much to Bucky’s surprise, he doesn’t.

He’d expected to have to throw shoulders, to part the drunk people like a high-flying sea in order to keep a visual on Tony; it’s happened before. It’s his fucking company, and yet Tony doesn’t seem to care that Carbonell is a big deal to people who matter, that the nature of their business has Tony regularly gladhanding prime ministers and presidents, that the green tech he and his teams dream up in R&D and roll out onto the street have gotten the heads of Big Oil--companies, countries, conglomerates--seriously pissed off. Sure, Tony had laughed off the first hundred death threats, but that bomb at an investors’ demonstration three years ago hadn’t been so goddamn funny, nor had the shower of shrapnel Tony had taken to the chest. The bastard was lucky to still be walking around and still he’s prone to childish shit like this, blowing off his detail and scrambling for some hidey hole where he can get buzzed enough to forget about the fact that so many people would applaud at his funeral, to turn off his big brain and lose himself in the pleasures of other people’s bodies. Don’t ask Bucky about Copenhagen. It’s happened before, Tony running away.

But in Rio, he doesn’t. He stays right where Bucky can see him when he pops the first pill. Makes eye contact, even, as he slithers into the arms of a tall, gorgeous beta--a look louder than the techno that’s booming from walls and up through Bucky’s boots, a look that says: _oh yeah, fucker? Game on_.

Bucky’s the one who ends up moving.

There is no dance floor, no stable sidelines that he can watch from; the mass is too frenetic, too joyous, and oh holy fucking fuck, is it loud. It’s so loud that it smothers the _what the fuck are you doing_ that’s trying to break of out his brain when the wave starts to carry Tony away and he has no choice except to plunge in.

He’s wearing tactical pants and a tight black t-shirt; hadn’t thought to change out of his travelling clothes. Hadn't had a chance to, really, before Rogers's voice had come over the earpiece and he'd flown from his room and gone banging down the hall. But despite the fact that he’s wearing more clothes than 90% of the people around him, nobody looks at him twice.

Correction: they _look_. Jesus, do they. But they’re not thinking snotty thoughts about his clothes. They’re thinking about how they could get him out of them, about what he looks like underneath. He’s never smelled so much unchained arousal in his life; everybody stinks of it, of each other, of hormones and perfume and sweat. Everybody who brushes against him is wet or very, very hard. He’s dancing a little. He has to. There’s no way to be a part of that crowd and not fall into its rhythms, its beat.

And then he has two full eyes back on Tony.

Tony, who’s in the arms of that same gangly beta, a kid of no more than eighteen with brown hair and no shirt who's holding Tony’s hips and preening as Tony strokes the damp lines of his back. They’re grinning at each other, grinding, and it’s fine, it’s totally fucking fine, until the air shifts and Bucky can smell how riled up Tony is, just from this, the hands of some kid barely old enough to drink and the shove of a little beta dick and it makes him _angry_ because Tony can do better than that. Tony can have all of the cock that he wants, that he fucking deserves, because that smell, the way Tony’s moving, the perfect swell of his ass, that belongs to Bucky, Tony does, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let Tony settle for less.

But he’s not the only alpha who feels that way, apparently, because before he slid in and grab, there’s another man in his way.

Long, dark hair and tight green pants. That’s all Bucky sees before the man’s parked behind Tony, before he’s bent his head and those black curls are spilling over Tony’s shoulder, his bare chest. He whispers something in Tony’s ear; even this close, over the music, the crowd, Bucky doesn’t have a prayer of hearing it. But what’s plain as day is the look on Tony’s face, the way he tips his head back to lay on the alpha’s shoulder; the lust there, painted on the wet lines of his mouth, even as he holds onto the kid.

Greedy bastard, Bucky thinks. Thinks louder when Tony catches his eye and winks. _Winks_ , the son of a bitch. Oh, fuck, he’s enjoying this. He’s getting off on making Bucky so goddamn mad.

No. No, he’s getting off on the two men he’s pinned between, on the soft mouth of the boy kissing him now, deep and eager, on the lips of the man that are skimming his throat, on the four hands clutching hard at his hips and rocking him between two greedy cocks: the alpha’s thick, the boy’s slim, and Bucky wonders if Tony could take them both at once, be speared between them, dripping, filled up with their spunk one one brutal, big shot. 

He'd be so easy to take after that. After Bucky licked out the intruders and shoved himself where they'd been and bitten Tony right in front of them, while his slick was still hot on their cocks.  _Mine_ , he'd say to this men, to Tony, as he nuzzled the blood on Tony's throat and knotted him up.  _This man you just fucked? Never again. He's mine, damn it. Mine._

 _Mine_.

He doesn’t realize he’s growling until heads turn, until the man’s sloe gin eyes are on him, the kid’s, and Tony’s, dark and wide and sneering. A jeer.

“Friend of yours?” the alpha purrs over the throb of the bass.

Tony grins. Grins and works his ass against the alpha’s cock and pulls the beta’s head down towards the open spread of his shirt, shudders when the boy's tongue finds his skin. “Mmmm. An admirer.”

“Yes, I can see that.” The alpha pets the boy’s hair and they all turn to look at him, burning. Flowers in a sweet-stinking train. “Shall I ask him to admire elsewhere?”

That sound again from his chest. It’s humiliating, for an alpha to be seen wanting. He can’t help it. Not in a place like this.

Tony’s eyes are unreadable, fogged up with lust and something else. Something barbed that Bucky can’t read. “No,” Tony says. “He can stay.”


	4. Chapter 4

The sound. That’s what gets to him. The sound of the bass and the look on Bucky’s face and the silver sway of the man at his back, a sway that speaks of power, of pinning, of being bent over in front of an alpha he doesn’t know and wanting it so bad he can feel his own slick sliding down the inside of his thighs. And the kid, brown skin and soft mouth and that salty beta smell, like a gin and tonic; oh fuck. One warm brush of those lips and Tony’s ready to eat him up. To be eaten, whatever. Right now, he doesn’t care. 

“Your friend is agitated,” the man says in his ear as the kid kisses him, as the man’s slim, elegant fingers work to tease open Tony’s shirt. “And very pretty. I can see why you want him to watch.” 

He should say no. He should deny it. If he weren’t off his gourd from the E, from the colors, from the feeling of being pinned between two men who want him, undeniably so--two men whose scents are so strong that they blot the rest of the place out, the swarm of sweating bodies, the arousal, the pleasure, the sweetest kind of fear. The fear that come from an omega making themselves vulnerable, letting bare hands they don’t know touch their skin and getting off on the danger of it, the possibility that biology might barrel down the last bit of sense and tell them to let some stranger claim them, bit and fuck and mark them up in the middle of this madness and maybe that’s exactly why he made a beeline here, isn’t it, why he dragged Bucky into the streets and straight to this door without hesitation, without looking back. He doesn’t want Bucky to watch, not really; he wants Bucky to _take_.

He could say it right now. Turn his face away from the kid’s and spit: _I want you. These guys feels good but it’s you I want. Your hands, your cock, your bite._  

Except his voice would be lost in the maelstrom and Bucky wouldn't hear and oh, Christ, he’s wet, and his dick’s at attention and good Christ, does he need to get fucked.

If Bucky won't do it, so be it.

He doesn’t answer the dark-haired man, the one who smells like cherry vodka and lightning. Instead he grabs the guy’s hand, the one curled over his ribs, and pulls it down, gets it wedged between his body and the kid’s. Uses it to smother his cock.

Behind the curtain of his hair, the man’s tongue finds Tony’s pulse. “You want something, daddy?” he hums, nuzzling the words into Tony’s skin. His hand on Tony’s dick stays frustratingly flat. “Tell me.”

“Fuck me.”

The kid moans against Tony’s cheek. Tony can feel his hips jolt.

“Right here?” The man kisses his throat again, feeds him a slight taste of teeth. “You want me to open you up right here and see how many hungry alphas come calling? Because they will, believe me. You smell so good even from up here. I can only imagine what you’ll be like when you’re bare.” He grunts and rubs himself against Tony’s ass. “You’ll have half this room on their knees begging to taste you if I opened you up here, daddy. There’s no fucking doubt about that.” 

“We should go,” the kid says in Portuguese, sliding the sounds around Tony’s mouth. “There are rooms over there, mmm? I need to suck you while he takes you. I want to see what you taste like when you come.” 

Tony is shimmering, boiling, a pool of oil making rainbows in the sun, the sun in Bucky’s eyes, burning, the white burn of the sliding spotlights. He humps himself against the heat of the man’s hand, the hard press of the kid’s body, and they’re all humming now, groaning, moving to the never-ending music in time and he can smell how turned on Bucky is, how angry, and why he hasn’t reached out and ripped Tony back from the precipice, he has no goddamn idea.

Except he does, of course. There’s only one answer. Bucky’s got no skin in the game; he doesn’t want Tony. No, what he wants in his prick alpha way is to see an omega put in his place: speared on the tip of an alpha’s dick. Doesn’t especially matter which one.

If he cared about Tony, they’d be long gone by now. He’d have been dragged away, maybe shut up in one of the little rooms that the kid is leading them towards, Bucky yanking him close, furious, jealous, kissing and petting and fucking and trying to set right whatever it was that went wrong between them. Ah yes, surely, they would.

But Bucky doesn’t care so they’re here, crammed behind a closed door in a room that’s barely big enough for three men, much less four. He has strangers's mouth on on his, biting, men he's only just met, and Bucky’s backed against the wall, his arms folded and his face impassive and whatever buzz Tony has been riding buckles under that look: interested, sure; heated, maybe, but blank, too, like he’s watching a movie, like what’s unfolding before him isn’t part of reality.

It's that look that drives it home at last, that crumbles the slim hopes that Tony's been clinging to this evening, every evening since the one he spent in Bucky's arms. None of this bullshit will work. He can't make Bucky jealous, no matter how much of a shit that he is. No matter how many alphas he bends over for or betas he puts on their knees, none of it'll make a difference because Bucky really doesn't care about him, does he? No. He doesn't. Not like that.

So he came to Tony's house and nailed Tony in his bed and touched Tony in a way that felt bigger, sweeter, than a one-night stand. But he'd also bolted the second he pulled out, practically, and Tony's been sure there was a reason, some kind of explanation.

He's been hoping. It's been a week now. One has yet to come. 

Sometimes, though, the simplest explanation is the best one, and Occam's Razor couldn't make a sharper point that Bucky's cool face does in that backroom, a room that's seen thousands of lovers and twice as many fucks, nor could it cut quite as quick or as deep.

Nothing he did tonight or any goddamn other would change the basic equation, would it? Bucky didn’t want him, end of sentence, _f_ _inal_. That was it. The plain truth.

So.

So.

Thank god he’s got one more pill.

“Wait,” he says to the man, to the boy. “Give me a second, huh? Wait.”

They hold him while he swallows. Watch him. Stroke the damp lines of his chest and his face.

“Better, _papai_?” the kid asks.

He closes his eyes and feels the colors come. Fire in his blood, that strange sort of stoking. The roar in his head softens, like the music muffled by the door, and he reaches out, hands swimming through the kaleidoscope of the air, of their scent, of this strange and wonderful place.

He hears someone laughing. It’s him. He feels warm skin under his palms, an alpha’s rumble. The groan of a young, eager beta.

Another breath and he’s sinking into a rainbow, the red and indigo and green swirling in his head. God, he loves Rio, he thinks, and then he’s not thinking at all. All he can do, thank god and the misuse of modern medicine, is fucking _feel_.  
  
“Better,” he says somehow. His arms are birds, a legion of butterflies; he catches them both in his wings. “So much better now, _bonitos joguetes_. Show you how much, hmmm? Come here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out angstier than I thought. Huh.


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky’s fine until the alpha tugs down Tony’s pants.

Ok, that’s a lie. And not even a good one. That’s straight-up bullshit.

Better said:

Bucky’s able to pretend that none of it is actually happening until the alpha pops Tony’s belt and tugs his trousers off his hips and peels them down the curve of his ass. Dissociation is a useful skill sometimes, one that'd kept him from losing his shit in the service more than once, and he’s been clinging to it like a parachute for the last ten minutes and willing himself to believe that what he’s seeing, what his body is telling him is all some sort of dream, a kind of terrible movie that will end eventually; all he’s gotta do is stand still and wait it out.

It’s fucked up, the whole situation is, but Tony is his responsibility and he’d walked with open eyes into this mess knowing full well what a little shit Tony could be when he was pissed and god almighty, he was. 

He had every right to be. Bucky understands that.

But what he doesn’t understand is how he could have handled it differently, what he could have said after their night together, those blissful couple of hours in which he was an alpha and Tony was his omega and that was the beginning and end of everything that mattered in the world, right there.

What was his alternative from running? What could have done except put as much distance between Tony and himself as he could, while the whole time his body was screaming _mate,_   _you fucking idiot! M_ _ate!_ It’d been his mistake to kiss Tony in the first place, to give into the warm vibrations in his chest that Tony always seemed to put there, that rich feeling of _good_ and _safe_ and _home_. It wasn’t Tony’s fault that Bucky’s body had read the situation wrong, that it had taken the natural omega response to being touched and licked and sucked by an alpha as a sign of something more, of something that couldn’t be.

So he wanted Tony, wants him. So what? That didn’t mean that the man who signed his paychecks really wanted him back.

This is the story he’s told himself, over and over, for more than a week, but watching Tony get willingly mauled by two strangers has made that story strained.

Seeing Tony’s body bared, though, it breaks that story in two.

They don’t strip him all at once. Oh, no. They take their time, these two. First they strip him down to his briefs, the beta falling to his knees and nuzzling the bulge, filling the room with a cinnamon-colored purr as the alpha ruts none-too-gently against the peach of Tony’s ass. Tony’s eyes close and his mouth opens and the smell of his slick covers the corners of the room--a creamsicle, clean citrus and cream--and any pretence Bucky has left of not giving a shit burns away in an instant, just like that. Because Tony looks like he wants it. He looks desperate for it, in fact: the dark-haired alpha’s cock and the young beta’s mouth and it doesn’t seem to matter to him that Bucky’s not in the picture at all.

But Bucky minds, his dick does, and all at once the mental mumbo jumbo he’s been feeding himself is so very much not enough.

“Wait,” he hears himself say. They don’t. “Stop.”

They’re too focused on each other, the three men in front of him, too keen to chase pleasure that’s there for the taking, and then--

And then.

And then the alpha gets his long fingers under the waistband of Tony’s briefs and he doesn’t tug the fuckers off. He tears.

He tears and the room fills with a smell as loud as the bass outside. The floor fucking shakes with it. Bucky would swear that it does.

Maybe it’s whatever shit Tony’s been taking that does it. Maybe having two lovers paw him has upped the ante on his body’s natural state. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s someone Bucky wants and can’t fucking have that makes the smell of his slick electric, a shot of lightning whose ozone never fades, but whatever it is, the alpha and the beta seem to sense it, too, because they don’t give Tony a second to think.

“I was going to tease you,” the alpha says against Tony’s neck as the kid licks at the tip of his dick. “I was going to give you my fingers until you came down this boy's throat but you need it right now, don’t you, you sweet little slut?”

Tony moans. It’s a sound that makes Bucky want to sink through the floor, that makes him want to run over and _take_. “Alpha,” Tony says, breathless. His eyes open, dark and helpless, and somehow, for some inscruitable reason, they find Bucky's.

“Alpha,” Tony says, hoarse, as the alpha reaches down to unzip his own trousers, as the kid takes him all the way down and lets out a groan of his own, “alpha, yes. Fuck me. Please.”

There is no sense in those seconds. Bucky’s story’s in tatters. The only thing he knows in that room, in that moment, is that Tony’s the only thing in the whole goddamn world that he wants, the only person that he’d do anything for, the only person he’s ever met that he has to have, he has to mark or else--

Or else something inside of him will wither, that small, hopeful part of him that war couldn’t kill, nor the deaths of other men at his hands, nor the deep cynicism that he’d imbibed for Uncle Sam just to survive. He walked away with a metal arm for his trouble, a leg that’s still peppered with shrapnel, and a certainty that the rest of the world wasn’t much different from the Army, was it? Arbitrary rules and institutionalized cruelty and a lack of interest in doing even the smallest thing to make the world what it could be: truly goddamn great.

But Tony is different. Tony is his.

Tony, he realizes in that last moment of sanity, is the person he loves.

Oh shit.  
  
Then he’s pushing off the wall. “I said _stop_ , goddamn it!” He’s reaching up, grabbing a metal fist full of raven hair. Snarling: “Get your fucking hands off him, alpha. He’s mine.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the addition to the tags above, please.

It doesn’t go well the second time.

It goes goddamn fucking _great_.

Which, after, is the problem, but let’s stay here for now: in the excellent, in the shove of skin against skin, in the kind of fucking that’s so fierce, so joyful, it feels like making love.

The door’s opened and closed again. The dark-haired alpha’s gone. Not happily, not without snapping at Bucky’s throat, but Bucky is bigger and Bucky’s not afraid and Bucky has a goddamn metal arm, so. The alpha goes.

The beta is harder to shake, mainly because the sight of the kid on the floor with his mouth red from Tony’s cock ticks something in Bucky that’s primal, that’s greedy; he likes the idea, for a moment, of having another partner to fuck. But then he’s touching Tony and Tony’s touching him and then the beta’s not important anymore.

They’re alone, then, locked away from a sea full of strangers, Tony naked and Bucky not and that doesn’t last long, not after their mouths find each other, their fingers, their cries. Jesus, the noise Tony makes when Bucky’s hands find his ass, when his thumbs stroke none too gently up the curves and in, it’s enough to set any alpha back on his heels, to turn the hardest steel molton. And then Tony’s whispering his name, Bucky’s, whispering it and rubbing his gray beard against Bucky’s rough neck, and that’s all she wrote, folks. There’s no coming back after that.

Never mind that there’s no bed this time, no soft, four-postered place to fall. Now there is Bucky on his back on a concrete floor, his t-shirt rucked up to his chin and his boots still tied and his pants kicked down to his ankles and Tony’s straddling him, smiling, his whole body shimmering and his cock pointing up his belly as he sinks down on Bucky’s cock, inch by beautiful inch, and when he’s full, when Bucky is at his complete and utter mercy, he says Bucky’s name again, louder, his mouth hanging open, like he can’t quite believe his damn eyes.

“Tony,” Bucky says. It’s all teeth, all gorgeous fucking need. “Baby, I need you. Need you. Come on, please. _Please_.”

There will be another time for slow, for exploration, for Tony to rub his face against Bucky’s breastbone and lick his pretty nipples until Tony can catch them in his teeth. Some part of him wants to believe that, is desperate to, even as the hormones in his body swirl up with the drugs and tell him _this is it_ and _there only is now_ and _take what you need from this alpha’s body now, omega, it’s yours; he wants you to have it_. _Take it. Take. Take._

Tony raises his body, feels the Bucky’s heat inside of him slide. “I want it.”

Bucky squeezes Tony’s hips so hard that it hurts and makes a choked sound that Tony feels like a fist. “Yours,” he says, his eyes dark and wide. “Whatever you want. Oh god, always.”

Tony comes like that the first time, on the sight of Bucky’s head tipped back, straining, on the feel of Bucky’s metal fingers digging into his thigh, on the stiff alpha cock that he’s desperate to ride, and when he shatters, splatters his heat on the curve of Bucky’s five o’clock shadow, it doesn’t do a damn thing to shatter the warm, pretty cloud that’s taken over his head, that’s seeping out of every pore of his body.

Then he’s on his back, he’s smothered by the smell of his own spunk, by the lovely stink of Bucky’s arousal, and god it’s perfect, it’s perfect, that cloud. It keeps him from feeling the floor, from hearing the sounds of the far-away crowd. It keeps him right here, with his alpha on top of him, burying himself in the heat of Tony’s body and snarling with each stroke, with each clutch of Tony’s hands in his hair.

It’s a dirty fuck, a desperate one. It’s the most beautiful of both of their lives, and when Bucky knots him--not slowly like he did in Tony’s bed but this time all in one greedy go--the only thing they both know is that it makes them feel hot and good and safe; oh god, so perfectly, beautifully _safe_.

“You’re gonna get it now,” Bucky grunts against Tony’s mouth. “Gonna fill you up. You want it, don’t you? Known it since the moment I saw you.”

Tony shudders, tightens, his fingers going tight in Bucky’s hair. “Alpha. _Bucky_. Oh, god, alpha. Please.”

One last shove, a sweet, needy huff, and god help him, Tony’s full, full to bursting, and wet. He’s so fucking wet. There’s no condom this time, no line between his body and Bucky’s, and it’s better, it’s so much better, and if he could think he might be able to remember the last time he took an alpha bare, wouldn’t he, except there’s never been one; he’s never had this before. Over 50 years and twice as many lovers and he’s never let one take him like this because it’s dangerous, the tiny rational part of his brain reminds him, because it feels so fucking good, because it’s the one social more about sex that actually makes any goddamn sense because it’s based in biology, not religion: the only person you breed is the person you mate. You fuck somebody without a condom and look out, kids, get ready; if your body has any say--alpha, beta, or omega--you might be with them for life, even if they’ve already got a partner, a husband, or a wife.

All the star-crossed lovers in movies, romance novels, TV: they all fuck first and build that goddamn bond and then spend the rest of the story fighting it, needing it, their bodies desperate but their minds, their circumstances always getting in the way, but then in the end, somehow, they find their way back to each other and build lives, have babies, show their enemies that being happy is the best goddamn revenge.

Decades of discipline, of safer sex, of good behavior: for Tony, they fall away, shattered like rose-colored glass for Bucky and he’s not sorry, not for a second. He’s so fucking happy, it hurts.

The world is a thousand colors when Bucky comes and comes and comes until all he knows is the pump of his dick and the luscious, silken clutch of Tony’s body around him, the way it’s fluttering and squeezing to draw out every last drop, and his knot is so big and his body so greedy that he can’t help but bear down and moan against Tony’s throat as his cock lets out spurt after spurt.

There’s a hand between them, frantic, straining, and when Bucky can move again, he rolls and pulls Tony with him, his dick still twitching, still tucked up deep and inside, and now Tony can touch himself; now Bucky can brace an arm under Tony’s head and purr as Tony tightens, as he whimpers, as his fist flies and his sounds get louder and they nuzzle each other’s throats and breathe in the other’s need, breathe out their own, and it doesn’t take so very long for Tony to wail and come long and hot between them and Bucky wants to have him again, for him to be like this, always, caught between pleasures present and past.

Their bodies are singing to each other, pouring novels into each other’s pores, and Bucky has never felt so content, so delicious, in all of his goddamn life.

“Need you,” Tony says against his throat, the words coming out in slow motion. “I need you, Bucky.”

Bucky smooths a hand down Tony’s back. “I’m right here.”

A roll of tongue, a catch of teeth on the side of Bucky’s neck, the same place parallel place that Bucky’s petting on Tony’s neck with his thumb. “I need this.” Tony kisses him there, sucks. “I need all of you, alpha. Please. Claim me.”

Bucky has to force the words out. He has to. He can't honestly believe what he's heard. "Is that--is that what you want?"

Tony chuckles, rubs the sound into Bucky's skin. "God, yes. Fuck yes." Then a worried sound, a little shiver, a blink. "Why?" he says. "Isn't that what you want, too?"

“Yes," Bucky says. Just like that; it's that easy, saying yes to his goddamn dreams. But. "But not when you’re like this, baby.”

Another flick of soft tongue. “Like what?”

“Tony, come on. I don't know what the hell you've been popping, but you’re high as a fucking kite.”

Tony harrumphs. “I am not.”

“You are.” Bucky turns his face and finds Tony’s, lays a shaking kiss over his mouth. 

“I don’t care.”

“Well,” Bucky says. “Tough shit. I do.”

Tony’s fingers brush the base of his knot, tease the seam where their bodies meet. “Bucky--”

“Oh, you can have that,” Bucky says. He cups Tony’s ass and rocks into him again, finds himself grinning when Tony whimpers. “You can have all of my cock you want. But you’re not getting anymore than that tonight, no matter how much you beg.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“It’s not.”

Tony grumbles but his lips are turned up. His dick is twitching again between them. “How much more you got in the tank, alpha?”

“Why? You got someplace to be?”

“Mmmm, no. Just wanna time things right.” He licks into Bucky’s mouth and leans back into that warm metal hand.

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

Tony sighs sweetly, a sound Bucky wants to hear every day for the rest of his life. “What I mean is,” Tony says, “I wanna come one more time with you inside me, darlin', so it’d be nice to know how long I’ve got.”

The answer, for the record, is just long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to come here, I think.


	7. Chapter 7

In the morning, things are...messy.

Bucky's knees are bruised, for one thing. Tony's are scraped all to hell, too, but he hurts in all the goddamn right places. And, and, he is physically unable to wipe off his wide, stupid grin, even when Pep yells at him from New York about missing his 9 AM.

“We can reschedule,” Tony says.

“We can try! Government officials generally don’t like being left high and dry."

“Knock a couple million off the offer, huh, and send them a fruit basket or twelve. They’ll find us some time.”

“But--”

Tony kills the call and drops the phone off the bed, the big, soft bed where his alpha is sleeping, stretched out beside him with his hand on Tony’s thigh, the metal fingers humming softly. They twitch as Bucky dreams.

It’s nearly noon and Bucky’s called off the dogs, did it first thing when they rolled out of the cab and into the private elevator, through the doors and back into Tony’s suite. Rogers was on duty, fortunately; he’s the most forgiving of Bucky’s bunch. And if his eyes had lingered a little too long on Tony’s spaghetti grin and ruined slacks for Bucky’s liking, if Bucky had seen Rogers' nostrils flare, well, the man was only human after all somewhere beneath his perfect soldier suit.

“I’ll just--” Rogers had said, backing fast towards the door, “I’ll run Ops this morning and send you a report back. And, er, I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

And bless the man, he’d done just that.

There’d been a long shower and warm, flowered soap, Bucky’s hands moving sleepily over Tony’s fevered skin, the last of the drug’s effects leeching away under the spray. They’d made love like that, only half awake, Bucky pressing in from behind and taking all of Tony’s weight, urging him to lean back so Bucky could hold him, could fuck him and send him to bed full and wet.

When he was ready to pop, he’d waved off the water and taken Tony to bed and Tony had fallen back, eyes closed and thighs spread and sighed so prettily for him when he slid in again, home. He’d clung to Bucky that time, holding him tight inside and out, and though he hadn’t come, his exhausted cock had stiffened and he’d whimpered against Bucky’s mouth when it was all too much, the night was, and in the soft gray of dawn Bucky had tied them together again with a cry that had made them both shiver as if a feather had been traced down their back.

They had fallen asleep like that, knotted, and Tony had only woken up when Bucky had kissed him, murmured nonsense against his cheek and eased his soft cock out, leaned back.

“‘M not going anywhere,” Bucky whispered when Tony whined. “Just turning over. You’re stuck with me from now on, baby.”

When the phone rang, the sun was burning behind the curtains and Bucky had been snoring and somehow, Tony had known it would be Pep.

He’ll tell her the real story tomorrow, he thinks. She deserves it. That, and she’ll want to get ahead of it with the press, because as many times as Bucky has bred him, as many people as they passed at the club last night, on the street on the way home--hell, just the way that he smells--there’s no way this sucker will stay in the box. It’ll get out, which is a good thing, honestly. Even if it does mean he’ll need a new head of security, huh?

There’s a tug on his thigh, a grunt. “C’mere,” Bucky mumbles. “You’re too far away.”

“I’m right here, Buck.”

One blue eye winds open. “Mmmm. Not close enough.”

Tony slides back under the sheet and curls into Bucky’s body, chuckles at Bucky’s greedy little purr, the turn of his palms over Tony’s hips, his ass.

Three times. Three times, he’s knotted Tony in, what, like 12 hours? It still doesn’t feel like enough. But Tony’s arched up against him, making hot, eager sounds, and when he kisses Bucky, open-mouthed and loud, Bucky’s nose fills with the telltale twitch of his slick.

“You can’t be ready for me again,” he teases when Tony lets him breathe. “Goddamn, old man. Has it been that long since you got some?”

“Mmmm, no. I just like the way you fuck me,” Tony murmurs. He shifts, lets Bucky’s fingers find his cleft, the sweetness in it. “Oh, alpha, you fuck me so good.”

There’s a rumble in Bucky’s chest that tastes like cinnamon and allspice, like whiskey, warming, a warmth that runs straight to his dick.

“But you know what I’d like better?”

“What, baby?” He knows the answer, he does. He wants to hear Tony say it.

Tony claws at his shoulder. There’s a fresh bloom of wet. “If you bit me.”

“Bit you where? Here?” Bucky closes his teeth on Tony’s jaw and pretends that he’s not shaking. That he’s not suddenly, brutally hard.

“No.”

He nuzzles Tony’s ear, opens his mouth. “Here, then. Like this?”

Tony’s head falls back and they’re both panting and oh god, they’re both thinking, oh god.

“No, alpha,” Tony gets out, his hand finding Bucky’s hair. He’s squirming, trying to get Bucky’s fingers inside him. “Lower. Lower. Oh fuck, on my throat.”

“Tsk tsk,” Bucky says. “You asked for it before, didn’t you? You were very specific. Cat got your tongue now?”

“Damn it, Barnes!”

Bucky grins, licks hot across the stretch of Tony’s neck. “Pretty sure that wasn't it."

He can feel Tony blushing, the blossoms of red on his body, the prod of his newly roused dick. Jesus, if he’s struggling this hard to get it out, then last night, when it had come out so easy, he really must have been monumentally high. “You’re a fucking menace, you know that?” Tony says. “You know what I want. You want it just as bad as I do. I could smell it on you before, right after I said it.”

“Said what, hmm?” A chuckle. “That was hours ago. You’ve barely let me rest; I'm not at my best and brightest. If you want something from me, you’re gonna have to spell it out.”

Tony pulls on Bucky’s curls, the dark, damp waves slipping through his fingers. Two words, he thinks through flame, through a swell of ridiculously beautiful feeling. All he has to do is say them and his whole life will change, all for the motherfucking good. Is that why they’re so hard now? Is that--

And then Bucky’s teeth scrape the spot where he wants them, where the call of his blood is the strongest, where the pleasures of being an omega run close to the surface, but deep.

“Tony?” Another scrape, a soft, tentative suck. “Tell me, baby.”

50 years and hundred of partners, so many alphas in and out of his bed. There’ve been a lot of people who’ve made him feel good, made him feel wanted, but nobody, not in all Tony’s days, has ever come close to shaking him the way that Bucky does, to making him feel like he’s flying, to making something fundamental in him happy and the rest of him, the man that he’s become beyond his biology, feel just as fucking loved and adored.

When he was young and dumb and looking for love, he’d always thought a claiming bite was the end of the story, the happily-ever-after, fade to black, _finis_. 

But he’s older now and one piece of wisdom that’s come with the gray, from passing through the hands of so many lovers is that now, on the edge of the precipice, the mouth of the alpha he loves at his throat, Tony knows that this isn’t the end. Oh hell no. He and Bucky’s tale? That’s just begun.

Something in him softens, the best kind of surrender. “Bucky,” he says, he shudders. “Come on, alpha. Claim me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the actual end now. Cheers for reading!


End file.
